Plant a tree in the middle of the MCG

The Melbourne Cricket Ground is considered a 'sacred place' by many Australians

A deep dive into more than 1,000 years history of the Melbourne Cricket Ground 

The year is 2016 and I’m looking through the window of the lounge above the hallowed grounds of the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG or G). I’m feeling a bit awe-struck because like many Australians I associate the MCG with big events: the 1956 Olympics, the VFL/AFL grand final and extravaganza concerts like Guns N’ Roses, Ed Sheeran and recently Taylor Swift. Apparently, the crusader Billy Graham attracted the biggest crowd of 130,000 in 1959.

Graham’s sermon to his many devotees segues with my view that the MCG is considered a ‘spiritual place,’ indeed a ‘sacred place’ by many Australians. This is the product of human folklore that began long before modern history, possibly over 40,000 years ago. More about that later.
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Sadly, I wasn’t at the MCG to yell myself hoarse at the footy or to enjoy a concert. I was there for a National Landcare conference to speak on sustainable design and conserving biodiversity. Sounds a little ‘ho-hum’ in comparison doesn’t it?

For most Australians, ‘sustainable biorich revegetation’ would sound very mundane, and that thought worried me a lot as I looked through the window. Here we were at the MCG, about 400 members of an Australia wide community based network that works very hard to improve the natural environment for the good of everyone. Yet for most people this event and the admirable efforts of Landcare sit well below their radar.

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It's been 161 years since a River Red Gum has been seen on the 2ha paddock called the MCG. Image: Tian Murphy

How to put a Landcare event on their radar?

Standing at that window, I imagined a group of Landcarers walking onto the MCG and planting a River Red Gum at its centre, about the middle of the cricket pitch. Just temporarily, as a conservation statement of course! I also imagined the nation-wide consternation and the widespread outrage of the Australian community.

Front page headlines in newspapers around Australia
might have read:

‘MCG defiled by Landare’  

‘Landcare desecrates the hallowed ground of the G’

‘Landcare madness!’

Other more appropriate headlines could have been;

‘Landcare nods to the ancient history of G’ 

‘Landcare did what? – now you’re all listening!’

‘The River Red Gum returns to the MCG after 161 years'

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The brash, slightly absurd, very cheeky and highly illegal act of planting a tree in a 2ha paddock called the G would likely go viral around the world because it’s ridiculous, funny and surprising. ​

I asked myself as I imagined the River Red Gum growing and spreading its branches to welcome back the thousands of different species of insect, bird, marsupial, reptile and amphibian to the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

'Is that what we need to do to get everyone’s attention?'

And when we do have the world’s attention, for 30 seconds if we’re lucky, could we slip in a powerfully worded, very chilling statement about the 'train crash' of an extinction crisis affecting most of the flora and fauna in Australia. 

​Or is that just being a party pooper? 

Wood engraving of an Australian rules football match at the Richmond Paddock , Melbourne (MCG), about 1866. Note the well spaced very old eucalypts, which are likely to be River Red Gum and Manna Gum

​Let me put this fictional, though notable, event into perspective:

1. A River Red Gum is planted in the middle of the MCG in 2016

2. At this time, the MCG had been a stadium for big events for 161 years. The original
cricket ground nearby was in a flood zone, the cricketers changing rooms regularly being washed downstream
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3. The MCG and surrounds was the spiritual home and a traditional gathering place for the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people for more than 40,000 years

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A 400yo River Red Gum scar tree in Yarra Park near the MCG. Photo John Young

4. The wetlands and banks of the Birrarung (Yarra River) are very likely to have
supported 400 year old River Red
Gums, growing on nearby flood zones and on the MCG. Prominent among the other tree species were; Manna Gum, Swamp Gum, Blackwood, Lightwood, Silver Wattle, Black Wattle, Black Sheoak and Sweet Bursaria.

5.  The 2ha MCG would have very likely supported about 8 very large River Red Gums scattered across its hallowed grounds. The historic spacing for old gums was 30-50m, which is about 4-10 trees/ha.

6. The first settlers described Melbourne as a ‘nobleman’s park,’ because regular cultural burning had kept it open and thinly wooded

​7. The dominant grasses on the fertile volcanic soils of the MCG are likely to have been Kangaroo Grass, Weeping Grass, wallaby grasses and various tussock grasses. Intermixed with these would have been a rich and diverse list of flowering herbs and orchids cultivated for food and medicines by the Wurundjeri for thousands of years.

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Marngrook football by William Blandowski.

The MCG's unimaginably deep past

The MCG has had an unimaginably deep past as a sacred place for the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people.

They would have gathered there from regions far and wide across their shared language group, to be ‘welcomed to country,’ tell stories, share jokes, sing traditional songs, wow onlookers with traditional dances, make new friends and play games. 

A very popular game was Marngrook, the Wurundjeri football game played with a tightly tied possum skin, which is likely to have given birth to our own unique game of football. Two large teams could have played the game around the trees on the MCG, marking and kicking in an elaborate game of ‘keepings off’ that continued for hours.

It seems very fitting then, that the MCG continues to be the spiritual home of Australian Rules football as well as an important meeting place for the many diverse cultures of the world that converge there and that now make up multicultural Melbourne.

...and the River Red Gums are still there!

The scattered trees which were a feature of the traditional Wurundjeri football game are now gone, or are they? I like to think that they have transformed/mutated into the eight, unusually tall, goal and point posts at the ends of the oval, which coincidentally is the approximate number of River Red Gums that would have grown on the MCG 190 years ago when Melbourne was called Naarm.

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Hollows in old paddock trees provide homes for countless arboreal insects, birds and mammals. Photo Gib Wettenhall. Ref: Recreating the Country. Ten key principles for designing sustainable landscapes. Click on image to discover more

The importance of paddock trees 

​It’s clearly not appropriate to plant trees on the hallowed turf of the MCG, though the scary truth is that Australian wildlife is in crisis and the country desperately needs more paddock trees to be planted and the remaining ancient trees protected (and encouraged to regenerate).
 
Paddock trees restored across our 'wide brown land' would support the migration of stranded wildlife, help our flora and fauna adapt to a warming, drying climate and buffer the damaging effects of strong winds in rural areas; yes scattered paddock trees are a very effective windbreak, unlike the the goal and point posts on the MCG.

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To read more about the many benefits of paddock trees click here

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To learn how to plant & restore paddock trees click here

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To read about the economics of protecting and planting paddock trees click here

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To buy your copy of
'Recreating the Country. Ten key principles for designing sustainable landscapes' by Stephen Murphy 
​click here

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